Well, well it’s just about time to pack up and head to Mendrisio for the BIG day – the World Championships. I guess today was a big day, too, though. Actually, it was a HUGE day – Kristin Armstrong won the World’s TT!!!! And not only did she win it but she crushed it by 55 seconds! Hot damn. I’m looking forward to seeing her tomorrow to give her an enormous congratulatory hug. However, it was also Jessica Phillips who put on quite a show today sitting in the hot seat (leader’s seat) until more than half the riders had crossed the finish line. Nice job, Jess!
If I rewind a week or so, I’ll take you back to the beginning of the Giro della Toscana – a 6-day tour around the Tuscany region of Italy. So, we pull in to our hotel where we will stay all week long and discover that we are ocean side. Oh yeah. Falling asleep to the sound of the crashing waves every night wasn’t hateful. And one of the nights there was this wicked storm that went on for hours – the thunder was a constant rumble of bowling pins in the sky and the lightening lit up the sky like it was on fire. It was pretty amazing to watch from our balcony.
Prologue – what I learned is that I cannot go from sitting in the car for 20 minutes (to stay dry while it’s dumping rain outside) to 0-50kph off the start line of a TTT. It was my job to get the team started and I did that but then I totally fell apart. Yep, I sucked. All I could do was hope the next day would be a better day.
Stage 1 – Pissing rain. Going into a climb that necessitated good positioning I flatted my rear wheel. I got my wheel change pretty quickly but I had to haul ass to try to get back to the peloton. Bad thing was was that the rim on my race wheel is wide and I like to run my brakes pretty loose so when I got my spare wheel I had NOOOO brakes. That wasn’t a problem going up the climb but it certainly became a big one to me when I had to try to chase down a wet, twisty descent that I was unfamiliar with. Needless to say, I had to wait until we hit the flats to chase back on…which I did. In the end I was there on the finishing circuits to help lead Shelley out for the intermediate sprints. Our goal for the week was to get her in the jersey. Job accomplished on day 1. Go to www.procyclingwomen.com to get an idea of how we felt at the finish of that wet, miserable day.
Stage 2 – Volterra. All I’m gonna say about this stage is that it’s a long, hilly day that goes up one side of Volterra, down another side, and back up a 3rd side to the finish. Wait, one more thing…the coolest thing about this stage is that Volterra is the home of the king and queen vampires. For those of you who have read the Twilight books, you know what I’m talking about.
Stage 3 – 2km TT. Was suppose to be 4.4km but was shortened to 2km. Was also suppose to start at 7pm but got changed to 8pm – the morning of the race. I think our last rider off was at 9.52 or something like that. We warmed up in the dark and then raced under “lights”. As long as you kept your head up, you were fine.
Stage 4 – Goal was to keep Shelley in the jersey. Well, she did that all by herself when she went off with the break of 5. We just got to sit back and wait for the break to come back if it ever did, which it didn’t so our day was more or less pretty chill.
Stage 5 – Insanity. 46kph average for the day. Pot holes, road furniture, cars, tight turns, wind, crazy Italians. Finish in Florence. Full gas all day and then some. Was going ok until my wheel exploded just before the finish. Not cool as it was one of my wheels for Worlds. But, the race was over and it we accomplished our goal of keeping Shelley in the jersey.
We, that being Mara, Evie, and myself (along with Alex Howes, Kirk Carlson, and Chris Barton) have spent the last several days in Lucca decompressing from Toscana and concentrating on getting our legs ready for Worlds. I have been to Lucca numerous times now and I have yet to do exactly the same ride twice (hence why I don’t know my way around yet). The roads here are amazing. The climbs, the descents, the views – awesome. If I didn’t have other people yelling at me to keep up, I’d never get anywhere because I’d stop all the time for photo ops. Ahhh, the life. Tomorrow we will drive the 3 hours to our hotel in Lugano where will finally be able to see the road course. I’ve heard rumors that this is one of the hardest courses in a very long time so I am chomping at the bit to see the damn thing for myself. Whatever it is, I know it will be friggin’ hard.
Hopefully I’ll have more good news to share Saturday afternoon!
